Infant feeding is always a point of great care and attention in Brazilian families. Due to the lack of time to prepare meals at home, the most practical answers found are often ready-to-eat and ultra-processed foods such as cookies, snacks and soft drinks.
The National Study on Child Food and Nutrition (Enani), coordinated by researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), points out that more than 80% of children up to five years of age in Brazil consume this type of food, which can be very dangerous for healthy growth.
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“On the day before the interview with the families, 22.2% of babies aged between six months and two years and 27.4% of children aged between two and five years had not consumed either fruit or vegetables. The situation is more worrying in the North region, where, on the eve of the interview, a third (29.4%) of babies up to two years old had not eaten either fruit or vegetables, and most of them (84.5%) had consumed ultra-processed”, guides Gilberto Kac, National coordinator of Enani. 14,558 children aged zero to five years were interviewed in 123 Brazilian municipalities between February 2019 and March 2020
Startup carioca seeks to meet fathers and mothers
Often the lack of time and the day-to-day rush end up getting in the way of parents who want to dedicate themselves more to feeding their children, but end up not realizing it. It was after observing this need that businesswomen from Rio de Janeiro Paula Cunha and Luciana Melhorim created Jornada Mima, a healthtech specialized in making practical and healthy meals for children from 0 to 6 years old.
Before the company was born, in June 2021, the two partners conducted interviews with more than 100 mothers, nutritionists and pediatricians to understand what the main market need would be.
“It is an underserved market. We are talking about digital mothers and fathers, who follow the pregnancy and development of the baby through apps and seek more complete solutions for their children’s food plan, thus reducing the burden on mothers, especially when returning from maternity leave, when children begin the period of food introduction”, explains Melhorim.
With an initial investment of R$300 thousand from the partners, the company works with a subscription model where plans range from R$182, with eight meals, to R$299, with 14, and deliveries are made weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Meals are produced in a kitchen in the neighborhood of Botafogo, south of Rio de Janeiro.
For this year 2022, the projection is to deliver 36,000 meals throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói and a growth of 1000% considering the first year of operation. Another strategy is to try to partner with companies for employees returning from maternity leave.
The situation has worsened in the pandemic
The research “Food in Early Childhood: knowledge, attitudes and practices of Bolsa Família beneficiaries”, published by UNICEF last December, analyzed eating habits of families with children up to six years old who benefited from the then Bolsa Família program. A total of 1,343 people responsible for 1,647 children in 21 states were interviewed.
The study points out that many of the families show concern about the children’s food, but that there is still a lack of information for them to be able to interpret the labels of the products.
In addition, the coronavirus pandemic, which closed several schools across the country in 2020 and 2021, further damaged the scenario as several children lost access to food at school.
“54% of the families interviewed said that any child aged up to 5 years and 11 months living in the house missed a meal or did not eat enough food because there was no money to buy it before the pandemic. During the pandemic, this rate grew to 72%. For 52% of respondents, the quality of food at home has also worsened since the onset of the global health crisis.
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